Briareus
by JRaylin441
Summary: In Greek mythology, Briareus had 50 faces that he could switch out. So does Edward Elric. 50 oneshots from various points of view regarding the complicated mess that is Ed. T because Ed is growing up in the military, so he's going to curse.
1. Adult

Adult - Edward Elric

_Ed sprinted down the halls of the house. He knew the building like the back of his hand, but somehow he kept getting lost, as the halls stretched away into infinity, with endless turns and twists that had never been there before._

_"Big Brother! Big Brother!" He could hear her, and he knew that if he could just run _faster _he could get there in time to stop it._

_A door to the right._

_He threw it open and at first thought he was looking into an empty room, but then he saw it. The chimera limped into the light of the doorway and stared at him, her head cocked to the side and Ed hadn't seen it when it happened but he _knew_ what came next and then she was nothing more than a streak of blood on the floor next to an unmoving body, but her eyes were still intact and they stared up at Ed, asking whywhywhy._

_The blood dissolved into little reaching black hands and her eye grew larger and larger until Ed was sure that he was going to fall in…_

Ed woke up gasping for breath and soaked through with sweat, so that he couldn't tell if there were tears on his face. The sheets felt slick against his skin. Shucking them off, he spent a moment in the dark, focusing on breathing, breathing. Just a dream, but his fault, all his fault.

Al.

Normally this was the time when Al would walk over to him and Ed would press his forehead against the cool metal and remember that at least there was this. If nothing else, he would keep going, because there was _this_ to protect and love and repay. It was a routine established between brothers after years of Ed's nightmares of the Gate. So why wasn't Al there now?

The floor was freezing against his super-heated feet, but he rushed around their dorm, trying to find where a seven foot suit of armor could possibly hide itself. Within a minute, it was abundantly clear that Al was no longer in the room, and Ed ran out in the hallway and down the stairs.

"Al! Alphonse!" He wasn't anywhere in the building and Ed was getting desperate until he checked the front doors. Just outside, there was a suit of armor sitting on the steps, arms wrapped around knees and staring at the stars.

"Al?" Something wasn't right. That much was already clear. He didn't turn around to the sound of Ed's voice, but just kept staring at the stars. There was no reason to ask. Nina had died three days ago, and they had been running on fumes since then. This was the first time Ed had really slept since he had heard…

He sat down next to the hulking metal shell that hid the fragile boy inside and knocked his automail hand against the chest plate so that it let out a hollow _gong_. Lightning fast, a leather glove grabbed at his flesh hand and clenched, so tight that Ed thought the thing might just fall off, but he squeezed back and looked up at the stars.

"I think she would have become a star. All is one and one is all, right? So she's a part of the universe now and I think that she is going to become her own constellation." Ed and Al had never seen quite eye-to-eye on exactly how far 'all is one and one is all' could extend. For Ed, it meant that she was currently in the ground, slowly rotting away and feeding bacteria and maggots, so that the cycle of life could continue. Al had always wanted more out of it than that.

For a moment, just a moment, Ed considered reminding Al of what was happening to Nina as they spoke. The girl and dog were currently wasting away, together in death as in life. But this was his little brother, and Al had always required a lighter touch than Ed.

"I think she and Mom are up there in the stars right now, shining in the sky so that the night doesn't have to be completely black." This was the first time that Al had mentioned this about their mother, but he spoke the words as if they had been rolling around his head for ages. Ed wondered if this was what he did all night, while Ed slept the hours away. There was a window just beside the bed, and it was all too easy to picture him, arms wrapped around his legs like they were now, talking to the sky through a little hole in the wall, convinced that their mother was listening.

Al didn't remember the Gate. Al had not seen as much of the transmutation as Ed had. That night had taken away any chance that Ed would ever be able to think like his little brother was right now, and he was grateful every day that it had been his job to remember the mistakes, rather than his brother's.

So he sat on the stone staircase; hair slicked back, loose, and drying crusty from the sweat; butt frozen stiff with bare feet quickly headed that way; pajama pants dragging on the ground and oversized shirt hanging off one shoulder. He sat on the stone staircase and held the hand of a seven foot suit of armor until his hand was purple and numb. He sat and watched the stars slowly fade as the sun creeped over the horizon.

And Ed realized that his brother was no longer perfectly protected. He had been hurt, and he was grieving in the only way that he could while stuck inside this metal casing, turning to the sky and the only family he had left. He was hurting, and Ed had run out of time to be a child. Time to grow up.

Remember the dream, and then pack the ghosts away, tightly, tightly. Lock the box.

"I see her. She's right up there, between the North Star and the Lion." One automail hand pointed up to the sky, tracing lines in the last hazy glow of morning stars.

**AN: So, this the first one shot in what will be my massive undertaking of a 50 one shot collection exploring the different sides of Edward Elric, my darling broken boy. Please let me know what you think!**

**For the most part, these stories will be told from the point of view of other characters watching Ed, but I thought the first one should give you a look into what I think is going on inside his head as he takes on different roles.**


	2. Composed

_Damon Garver - Composed_

Damon Garver did not read the newspaper. Never had. Getting a job right out of school that involved the reading of endless reports on dull subjects could do that to a person. Eight hours a day spent in a dark room, bent over the handwritten scrawl of a hundred military dogs, and people expected him to spend more time outside of the job doing the same sort of thing? Besides, anything truly important would appear in the reports, and this way he could read the facts without worrying about propaganda getting thrown into the mix.

Of course, this way also meant that he had never heard of the People's Alchemist.

Sure, he knew Edward Elric. How could he not? Major Elric was, in fact, the cause of a roughly biweekly migraine that would arrive neatly stacked into the manila folder labeled _Colonel Mustang_. The file would bulge with papers and Damon would gingerly reach towards it, praying that today wasn't the day. Not yet.

The file had bulged with papers this morning and his prayers were left unanswered. There, amidst the neatly stacked paperwork and reports from Colonel Roy Mustang's team, was the sheet of crumpled, stained paper. It was just wrinkled enough that it formed a blip in the orderly stack, pushing its neighbors to the sides and leaving little areas of space. Already, there was a buzzing pressure building behind Damon's left eyebrow.

He would get it over with. He would read the damn report, and then file it away and never think about it again.

The problem was, Damon was still young. He had spent the night before out at the bar. His friends had dragged him there, but upon arriving he had discovered another, very enticing reason to stay. He had thought that waking up hung-over and sleep deprived was well worth the reward, but as he gazed down at the blip in the stack, he was no longer sure.

And then he took it out.

Crayon. Normally the reports were simply food stained and rumpled. Written in a messy blur and so inadequately descriptive that he had to spend another few hours researching what had gone on, simply so he could file the report correctly. Forget reading the newspaper, Damon was pretty sure that he could _write_ the newspaper by this point. The crayon, however, was a new step into hell, something that he hadn't known was possible. The thick tip had smudged all the words together, so that the handwriting that usually required Damon to sit down with a microscope and a spare three hours was now rendered completely illegible, even on his best day. And this was hardly his best day.

Something snapped.

He was _not_ going to go through this again. No, Damon was going to march up to the Colonel right now and let him know that he had better control his subordinates. Because this was reaching a point of irritation that was making him contemplate a job as a journalist, and Damon didn't even read the newspaper.

As he stormed his way toward the elevator, a small part of Damon felt guilty for what he was about to do. Mustang was actually a fairly stand-up guy, as far as the higher-ups went. Damon had spoken to him on more than one occasion, and had honestly enjoyed the experience. Also, he didn't know it, but he had helped Damon win over women for the past few years. All it took was one drop of the name, and any woman in the city would look at him with new eyes, as if to say _I've heard about him. I wonder what you're like, as his friend._

But this was beyond that now. Major Edward Elric had driven Damon to this.

The office was on the third floor, and light was much more prevalent here than in the stuffy filing room in the basement (he knew that he should have brought sunglasses). Hawkeye was sitting at her desk, seeming to survey the rest of the office as Falman, Feury, Havoc, and Breda worked furiously under her gaze. The door to the Colonel's office was shut tight, and a boy was sitting on a chair outside it, clunking his shoes against the chair legs.

The boy had long gold hair and eyes that were similar in color to Hawkeye's. Hawkeye wasn't the sort of person to get knocked up and raise a kid on her own. There had to be a guy in her life. Well, there went the four-year bet that the secretaries downstairs had going, along with five months of work on Damon's part. If he hadn't already been on a mission, Damon would have taken a moment to grieve the missed opportunity. As it was, Mustang's office was _right there_, and in only a few more seconds, he would be on his way to fixing the menace that was Edward Elric.

"Hey kid, move. I need to talk to the Colonel." Damon was still too incensed to notice the fact that all work behind him came to an abrupt stop as Colonel Mustang's men turned to watch the show.

"Yeah, well so do I, so you can just wait in line." The pain behind Damon's eye was growing by the second and this really wasn't the time for this. He didn't want to talk to a kid when he could be taking the step to finally make his job bearable again.

"What is this, bring your kid to work day? You can wait before you interview him for a school project. Now move it."

The silence before had been anticipatory, but now it was shocked. The kid shot to his feet, fire blazing quite suddenly in his eyes, and was only stopped from leaping on Damon by the quick arm that appeared out of nowhere and latched onto his shoulder. Hawkeye. Somehow, the woman had made it across the room in time to avert the assault that had been pending, if only for a moment. The kid was chafing under her hand like it was a collar or a harness.

"Relax, Ed. You know that you're young." He didn't change much, but at least it looked like he was done foaming at the mouth, so that was something. It would have been the end of it, actually, if Damon's impaired mind wasn't slowly putting the puzzle pieces together. The comfort level that Riza had with this boy. His blatant disregard toward the rules of social situations. She had called him Ed…

"Ed!" The interjection spilled from his lips as the pieces fit into place. The boy, who had sat back down at some point, though he was still kicking pissily at the chair legs, cut him a glance as if to say _what do you _want_?_. "Is Major Edward Elric your father?" It was possible that Damon's voice had twisted around the name as if it were some foul-tasting thing, but he would never admit that.

For a moment, the boy stared up at him as if contemplating exactly how he would go about removing Damon's eyes and feeding them to him while still alive, but then he seemed to decide that he was more amused than angry. He let out a sardonic chuckle and reached into his pocket.

The silver pocket watch gleamed in his palm and everything was suddenly making a lot less sense. "I'm Edward Elric, dumbass."

Damon had been distracted this whole conversation by the office behind him, containing the answers to fixing everything, but now his gaze focused laser-sharp onto the boy. Somehow, the shock of it all had knocked him off balance and drained off some of the anger. Then Edward Elric grinned the grin of someone who wasn't sure just what they had done wrong but was sure they were going to enjoy it and the fury flooded back, crashing over his common sense and tinging his vision red.

"What. _Exactly_. Made you think it was a good idea to write a report in _red crayon_." His hand was fisted in the front of Ed's shirt and he had him shoved up against the wall, as if his hands were prepared to strangle this boy and when had that happened? "Never mind the _stains_ and the _cramped handwriting_ along with the _complete. Disregard. For. The. Necessary. Details_. This is the last straw. I can't do it anymore."

The fight finally seeped out of him and Damon experience a moment of panic as he realized that he had just physically assaulted and possibly emotionally traumatized a _kid_. Of course, it took one look at the kid to see that this was hardly the case. It looked more like Ed was resisting the urge to yawn while resting his back against the wall, completely supported by Damon's hand. Damon let go.

"You good?" He should have been asking the question, but Ed was acting like this was all commonplace and to be expected. Damon managed a jerky nod.

"Thought the Bastard was the only one who read this shit. Makes sense that he isn't, though. I shoulda thought of that earlier." And that was probably the closest that Damon was going to get to an apology. It felt like more than he deserved. One more nod and Damon gave up on trying to understand how he had lost his cool _so badly_. The threatening migraine had fully bloomed into a rampaging elephant inside of his head and he felt like retreating back to the cool darkness of his office to take a nap.

Havoc looked like he was about to bust a gut trying to keep his laughter inside.

On the walk back down to the basement, it fully hit home what Damon had just done. He knew what Major Edward Elric had accomplished, hell, he had been the one to sort through the different successful missions and file them into some sort of order. Edward Elric, who had taken down mass murders, protected towns from ambushes, and revealed countless cases of corruption and deception throughout Amestris. Edward Elric who was, it turned out, somewhere around the age of twelve. Damon had heard stories of child soldiers, children who lost sight of anything resembling morals when faced with the terrible reality of their lives.

Damon should be dead. He should be dead twice over.

But somehow, Major Edward Elric had left him alive, and the contemplation of his most recent brush with death was bringing the rampaging elephant to a climax, so Damon curled up on the couch in his office, turned off the lights, and decided to stop thinking for the next few hours.

* * *

><p>Damon reached for the folder, dread clenching his heart as he realized that it had been over two weeks since the Confrontation. He was long overdue for a report. Even so, there was no crumpled sheet making a divot in the otherwise flat stack of papers. What was taking so long?<p>

Halfway down, he came across it.

Three pages, stapled together into a neat little stack. The handwriting was a little clumsy, yet it was clearly legible. The report itself was comprehensive and concise. If every report looked like this one, they wouldn't need someone to do Damon's job. And across the top of the page, was the neatly printed name: Edward Elric. It was like a whole other person had written it.

Damon filed it away accordingly and grinned to himself for the rest of the day. He couldn't put his finger on what the exact reason was, but he felt like he had just won some kind of competition.

* * *

><p>Bonus:<p>

"But Brother, it's not fair that you make that man's job so hard just to annoy the Colonel. Just write a nice report."

"Dammit, Al, I wouldn't have told you about it if I'd known you would try and make me do this."

"Why not just rewrite the report. It never takes you very long anyway."

"If it's such an easy job, why don't _you_ write it?!"

"You know that's against the rules."

"Since when have we ever cared about the rules?"

**AN: Sorry it took so long to update. Exams are coming up, so there have been endless projects and other things to attend to, and by the end of the day my brain is too tired to write anything.**

**Please let me know what you thought!**

**-Jakki**


	3. Determined

Havoc didn't know a lot, but much of what he did know was composed of things he probably wasn't supposed to. That sort of thing tended to happen when you worked in the military, especially when you worked under one Colonel Roy Mustang. Havoc knew that it was possible to create a homunculus, and that the fuhrer had been one. He knew that the Fullmetal Alchemist had at one time been half automail (and a fourth of him still was), and that his brother had at one time been nothing more than a suit of armor. Last of all, Havoc knew, from one particularly memorable overheard midnight conversation, that a philosopher's stone was made from human souls.

The problem was, none of this information was in any way useful when trying to run a general store.

_Yes, madam, here's your rope and jerky, and as a matter of fact, no. I have found that blowing up a homunculus is not the most efficient way to kill it, unless you have a way of quickly doing it many times in a row._

No, that wouldn't go over very well.

To be honest, Havoc missed the military. Sure, he'd seen some things that he would rather forget, and he'd gone through some rather traumatizing situations, but at the end of the day he knew that he had a set of friends who would do anything for him. He knew exactly where he stood, in his life and among the team members, so that he never felt useless or confused. Life was easier in the military. Plus, women seemed to love a man in uniform.

With such fond memories, it had been difficult to find a bright side to being paralyzed from the waist down. In fact, it was still rather difficult. Which was probably why the phone call he had received the day before was so tempting. The Colonel, voice rushed and confident, still flying high off his victory, had been so sure of himself. The philosopher's stone was the answer to all their problems. They would use the renewed vision and fixed legs to build a new Amestris.

The Colonel wanted to fix himself and Havoc, using a stone made from human souls.

And the logic made sense, when referring to Mustang. His motives were pure in wanting to protect everyone in the country by leading virtuously, and it would be an honorable use of the souls to make that happen. Havoc, on the other hand, knew that he had been useful to the Colonel, but never _that_ useful. Not enough so that he could logically assume that the souls would be okay with helping him.

Of course, the Colonel had also been overflowing with motivation. It had been fairly clear over the phone that he would not be taking no for an answer when he showed up in three days to perform the transmutation.

Which meant that something had to happen in the next three days. Havoc had to act fast, before either the Colonel arrived or his moral compass decided to take a vacation.

There were three options. One: Havoc could sit and wait for three days, allowing Roy to heal his spine when he arrived, and the return to Central to help with repairs. This plan had only one flaw, and it was that every nerve in Havoc's body (working and not working) cried out at the _wrongness_ of it. Human lives were not meant to be collected and saved until their energy was needed by a new person who decided that their need was great enough. This plan was a no-go.

Option two: Havoc could wait for the Colonel to arrive and then try to hold his own in an argument. Ending in his remaining the chair, perhaps for the rest of his life. Which would really suck (the whole unable-to-move-the-bottom-half-of-his-body thing made attending to certain…needs in the preferred manner almost entirely impossible). Besides, Jean trusted himself about as far as he could walk when it came to maintaining his morals in the face of Mustang's usually-overwhelming drive and passion. Havoc wouldn't stand a chance. So another bust.

Option three: Havoc could act before the Colonel arrived, in such an irreversible way that there could be no way for Mustang to simply talk his way into what he wanted. Which would require him to do something that he had been deeply considering for a while now: automail. He would be able to walk again, after he recovered from the surgery. Besides, while few women could handle a man in a wheelchair, Havoc had heard of women who were turned on by metal body parts.

So really, there had only been one option from the start, which was how Havoc found himself wheeling his chair up the ramp outside the Rockbell's house, after riding a train for hours. Of course he was terrified. There were stories passed among the men in the dormitories of a woman whom even Edward Elric was terrified of, who could order him around without any hesitation or moral qualms. A woman like that, Jean was sure, would be something.

"Hello." She was beautiful, no doubt about that. The girl who answered the door was wearing a green tube top and bulky pants. She had a toolbelt slung round her waist and light blond hair that hung past it. Too young for Jean, but undeniably pretty.

"Hello. My name is Jean Havoc. Are you Winry Rockbell?" The girl nodded and took a glance at Jean's whole body, quickly sizing up the situation. It was clear that this sort of thing happened rather often to her.

"Is there any way that I can help you?"

"Yes, I was hoping for some automail."

She was quick, Jean would give her that. Once he had finally managed to convince the girl that this was what he wanted, and he would not change his mind, she had immediately launched into taking measurements of his legs and discussing the different options and kinds of automail that would be available to him. They discussed the options of going full-automail or of creating a framework over his lower spine and legs to hack into his nervous system and help control the muscles. Finally, they settled on the framework, which would allow him to keep his flesh legs (he wasn't too fond of the amputation option) and maybe appear slightly normal. Two days, she said, before the ports would be ready and prepared from installation. Would that be enough time for him?

Two days was enough. It would all fit in with the schedule that would allow him to be irrevocably changed by the time Mustang arrived to 'help'.

So two days passed with Jean trying not to think too hard about the stories he had heard about automail surgery. Even Winry hadn't tried to sugar-coat it. _The most painful thing you will ever experience_. Which, he supposed, made sense. After all, they would be wiring into his nervous system. What more could be expected to happen?

Now the crisp white sheets of the operating bed were pressing into his chest, back presented to the world and, more importantly, to the teenaged girl currently wielding a scalpel under the watchful eye of her grandmother. Jean thought that maybe he should be scared, but while it was true that he was not looking forward to the coming pain, he found himself rather at peace the with idea of what he was about to do. After all, Edward had been coming to this place for years to have his automail maintained, and everything seemed to be working for him. Besides, Ed had been eleven when he had undergone the same thing, so while it would be bad, it couldn't be _that_ bad.

Then the blade made its first incision and _oh_.

Jean would like to say that the pain had all blended together after a while, until it was just a constant buzzing, or that it had been so much that his body had been overwhelmed to the point of passing out, but that just wasn't the case. Instead, the blade sliced through his nerves and sent jarring, lancing pain up to explode behind his eyelids in red fireworks. There was no escaping it, not when you were messing with something wired directly into the brain's pain receptors. Jean realized that he was yelling and crying, but he could not even begin to search for the self-control that would be needed to contain the sounds. This was so much more than agony.

Jean lost himself in it, and for a time that could have been days or seconds, he was a being composed only of pain. When the pain finally eased, he tumbled headfirst into sleep, with no thought or transition in between.

* * *

><p>When he woke up, his body felt different. There was a sharp ache in his lower back, and the rest of his body felt brittle and stretched, as if he had been taken apart, roughed up, and the shoved back together, full of new edges where there hadn't been any before. The act of blinking took monumental effort.<p>

"What were you thinking?" The emotionless voice came from his right, and Jean would have turned to look if his head didn't currently weigh around a ton and a half. As it was, he didn't actually need to look. It was Mustang.

Apparently grasping the situation, Mustang's face soon appeared at the edge of his vision, gazing down at him in a confused respect. Apparently he had yet to realize that words were quite beyond Jean's grasp at the moment.

"He's a dumbass. He wasn't thinking." Ed was here? Sure enough, his face soon appeared opposite Mustang's, gazing down on Jean with blatant disapproval, but he hardly noticed. Instead, the still-paralyzed man found his eyes straying to the once-automail shoulder of the young alchemist. Eleven. Ed had been eleven years old when he had gone through the pain that Jean had just endured. And that wasn't all. He had endured the absolute agony of port installation on his shoulder and had then _done it again_ on his leg.

This was no child above him. Jean had known that in theory from the moment they had met, but this was the first time that it truly struck home. Hell, Ed was barely human. He was determination personified and contained within a flesh shell.

But all this thinking was making him tired. Without consulting him, Jean's eyes began to droop closed, and he drifted off.

* * *

><p>The next time Jean woke up, the metal frames had been attached to his legs, but the nerves had not been reattached. He knew because he could see glinting metal out of the bottom of his vision, but there was no feeling being relayed to his mind by the pressure plates.<p>

"Oh good, you're awake." It was Pinako this time, the old woman whom he had met the morning of his operation. She was currently heaping pillows behind his back while Ed lifted his upper body.

To his pleasure, it seemed as though Jean's vocal cords were willing to work today. "Where's Winry?"

"Oh, she's sleeping off the most recent all-nighters. She's been working almost non-stop on this frame for you." As she spoke, Pinako pointed toward the gauzy curtains over the window and Ed, apparently used to this sort of silent command, walked over to open them up. A wash of mid-morning sunlight flooded the room and set all the floorboards to glowing. "But it's okay, because I have Ed to help me." Judging by the twist in Ed's lip, Jean could guess that 'helping' was not one of his favorite activities. So it looked as though there were two women living here who could order the Fullmetal Alchemist around.

"So, how are you feeling?" As she spoke, the elderly woman ran her fingers down the framework, pausing at joints and checking to make sure that everything was perfectly arranged.

Jean pondered the question. There was a ringing in his head and a buzzing in his ears that felt like a terrible hangover times a thousand. All of his muscles felt like they had the day after his one and only trip to the gym with Major Armstrong. There was a stinging pain in his lower back that would throb when he took a deep breath. All in all, he still felt like death, but at least he no longer felt like death warmed-over, so he supposed that was something.

"Not so good, but I'm definitely on the mend." Apparently, the information Pinako was gathering from his legs matched his current assessment, because she nodded to herself and then turned her intense gaze onto Jean.

"Well that's good. We won't get started on rehab until we reconnect the nerves, but today we are just going to do a check of everything else, to make sure that none of your working nerves were damaged in the process. Problem Ed?" Edward had been staring at the woman in confusion while she spoke, and now he spoke up.

"Giving special treatment to non-family members?" he asked. "I never did this." He sounded indignant, but Pinako huffed out a breath in response.

"As I recall, Edward, you were already trying to get out of the bed and walk on the unattached leg at this point. There was no need to check. Now shut up and read your damn book. I'll tell you when I need you." Ed just stuck his tongue out and muttered something that sounded suspiciously like _old hag_ under his breath as he grabbed a book off the side table. In moments, he was lost to the rest of the world.

Jean, on the other hand, was staring at the teen, while absently moving muscles and joints as the old woman called them out. It had always astounded Jean, the casual tone of voice that Ed would adopt when addressing his missing limb. Amputees were the sort of thing that society spoke of in hushed tones, behind raised hands, as if it were something to be brushed to the side and ignored. But Ed had always worn the automail like a badge of honor. Something that had bad memories attached, but that also showed his strength and victory over setbacks. There was always a solemnity in the Fullmetal Alchemist's face when he revealed the atuomail.

Jean had never understood.

But now, as Ed's hair burned in the sunlight, Jean could feel himself learning more about the old man in a child's body. This was a boy who had felt worse that he was currently feeling, yet had already been up and around, trying to walk. Jean could hardly shift his weight, but this boy had not been able to accept a setback. He had gone through three years of rehabilitation in one year, because there were places to be and things to discover and a body to get back.

Jean laid in his bed and Ed read his book. And Jean realized that they were lucky Ed had been on their side.

**AN: I don't know how I feel about this. I hated it at first, but it's starting to grow on me. I do know that I like writing as Jean. He's a fun one.**

**But wow! I could never imagine how many people would like this story. I'm so honored that you all are taking the time to read this! Please let me know what you all thought.**

**Jakki**


	4. Contradiction

Chapter 4 - Contradiction

Ada was a very logical woman. She prided herself on this fact. All throughout her life, she had avoided the hero-worship of prominent figures that her friends had gotten caught up in. Sure, she would admit that some of the men were attractive, but that didn't make them anything more than regular human beings. She hadn't known what to _look_ for, then, when she started to feel herself holding one person above the others. She hadn't known what was happening until the admiration overwhelmed her logical thought process.

It was all Gil's fault, to be honest. _He _was the one who always wanted a bed-time story revolving around a boy-alchemist who was somehow able to outsmart and overcome any obstacle placed in his path. It was _Gil_ who always got a sparkle in his eye when he saw pictures of Edward Elric in the newspaper, and _Gil_ who would buy the papers and bring them home to tack up on his bedroom walls. _Gil_ who talked on and on through dinner about what the kids at school were saying, and how Edward had once taken on _twenty men_ at the same time like it was nothing.

He wanted to be a state alchemist when he grew up, he said. Like Edward Elric.

So Ada happened to go out of her way to learn more about Edward Elric. She worked in the military, and it was easy to come by information like that. If it made her son happy, then why wouldn't she?

As she stared down at the assignment, she promised herself that that was all this was. She was not excited to work with Major Elric because he was some sort of superior being. She was simply looking forward to bringing home more stories for Gil. Honestly.

* * *

><p>The arrival of the Fullmetal Alchemist was preceded by a loud voice complaining from the end of the hall. Ada listened as the complaints moved closer and closer to the door of her office before it flew open. A hulking suit of armor stood behind a bundle of energy wrapped up in the body of a short, fourteen-year-old boy with golden hair and eyes. Both were framed by the pale wood of the doorframe.<p>

Ada wasn't fazed by the unorthodox appearance of the boys. There were pictures of them taped up all around the house. She also didn't mistake the armor for the legendary alchemist, because _'people always think his little brother is the alchemist because he wears a suit of armor but it makes Edward really angry because he doesn't like it when people overlook him because he doesn't like that he's short.'_ Ada refused to admit that she was a little excited to see what the Fullmetal alchemist was going to be like. He didn't look like a child, simply an adult with the height of a child. She knew everything he had accomplished and everything that he was rumored to have done, and she knew that this was no longer a boy in front of her.

"Hello Edward. I assume that this is your brother Alphonse." Ada stood up to shake both of their hands. Edward smirked a little and surveyed the office while she did so, as if his attention had already been captured by something bigger and better than her. Alphonse gave a little bow in return. "Before we get started, I have a quick request?"

Edward waved a hand over his shoulder before settling deep into a cushy chair in the corner of her office. "Sure lady. What do you need?"

"This is so embarrassing." Ada gave a little laugh. "I was wondering if you could sign an autograph for my son? He is very fond of you." The smirk that had been trapped in the corner of Edward's mouth since he entered the room grew into a behemoth of a smug expression.

"Sure." He took the proffered sheet of paper with a little flourish of his hand, looking like the cat who caught the canary. "What's your son's name?"

"Gilbert."

"And how old is he?"

"Nine."

Edward waved the paper in the air to dry the ink before handing it back. Stretching his hands behind his head, he settled deeper into the chair, looking for all the world as though he owned the office. The autograph seemed to have made him grow a few more inches in confidence alone.

"So, how about we go catch this baddie?" He hopped out of the chair and left the office, knocking his right hand against his brother's chest plate as he went. Answering his unspoken invitation, Ada followed.

* * *

><p>He had a very unusual method of investigation. To put it simply, Edward Elric would stroll down a busy street, casually talking to the people he passed. <em>How are you? Lovely weather. Hey, have you happened to see my uncle? He's just over six feet tall and he's got long black hair. A scar under the right eye. No? Thanks anyway.<em> It was like an entirely different person from the one she had seen in her office had taken over his body. He was genial and charming, convincing even the most reserved people to put in a word or two. Not even the intimidating suit of armor could stop the common people from feeling comfortable around him.

Ada felt like she should be taking notes.

"Brother, focus!" She had only looked away for a moment, but in that time it seemed as though Edward Elric had completely forgotten what he was doing. Apparently, all it took was a street vendor selling honey-roasted nuts. The sticky-sweet smell had caught the Fullmetal alchemist's nose and he was visibly salivating as he cleared a way through the crowd.

For a moment, Ada felt frustration well up inside of her. There were lives at stake, and if they didn't put their full efforts toward catching this man, it would be their faults when more people suffered. Yet here this man was, digging into his pockets for spare coins while he deliberated between walnuts and almonds. His brother was coming up behind him now, and reached out to grab his shoulder, but Edward Elric seemed to sense the movement and shifted out of the way at the last second. They kept that up for a good minute, Edward dodging and ogling the cart while his brother tried to catch him and the vendor tried to comprehend exactly what was happening.

* * *

><p>"The people here are great! I've never had a street vendor give me free food before." They were headed down a side street, the sun burning at their backs. Edward was happily munching on his walnuts, tossing them in the air and trying to catch them, while occasionally stopping to lick the sugar from his fingertips. He looked completely content with himself and his life in that moment, and Ada marveled at the way such a simple thing could make him so happy. She decided not to tell him that the only reason the nuts were free was because the vendor had looked ready to do anything to get the fighting boys away from his cart.<p>

"So where are we going?"

Edward tracked the motion of another walnut through the air, caught it, and devoured it before replying. "The woman said that she saw him around here last night, at the restaurant on the corner. We're gonna go check it out." Oh. How had Ada missed that conversation? It had probably occurred sometime in the immediate aftermath of the street vendor fiasco, when she had been distracted by the vague annoyance she was feeling toward Edward Elric.

He was slightly obnoxious, and highly immature, but he was also very efficient. Somehow, he had managed to find a better lead than Ada ever would have, all while causing a great ruckus.

The restaurant was on their right, open but empty, as it was currently the lazy part of the afternoon, when people were making the last push to finish their work and everyone felt an alluring call from their bed. Edward stood in the middle of the street and stared up at the buildings around him.

"That one." He pointed to an open window across the street from the restaurant, two floors above the foot traffic.

"Hmm?" There was no way that he had already found something.

"Look. Do you see the green coat hanging on that chair? The woman said he was wearing something just like that." A smirk screaming Edward's sense of superiority appeared. "Never wear conspicuous clothing. It makes people remember you."

Did he even realize what he was saying? "Brother, you know that you are wearing a bright red coat."

"Yeah, Al, but we're on a team with the _good guys_." Edward rolled his eyes and started off down the street. "He's not in right now. We'll have to come back tonight and see if he stops by." Ada trailed after the pair, marveling at how simple Edward's world view seemed to be at times. Good guys and bad guys. He had such a firm sense of right and wrong. Idealistic, almost, but with the authority to back it up. In a way, it was like he still had a child's view on the world.

Something clenched in Ada's stomach and she decided to think about something else instead.

* * *

><p>They stopped to wait at a little café on the edge of town. Much like the restaurant, it was empty. Even the flies that trundled through the air seemed about ready to faint. Ada sipped a signature drink with a name she couldn't remember. All that mattered was that it was cold and frothy, and just the thing she had needed to perk back up. Edward and Alphonse, on the other hand, had slipped outside to 'find a way to pass the time'.<p>

Out of curiosity, Ada picked up her drink and moved to an outdoor table, trying to spot the major and his brother. It wasn't a difficult task. They had taken over the empty lot to the side of the café and seemed to be sparring. She might have been worried for their safety, but one look at Edward's face told her that there was nothing to worry about. His head was thrown back in a laugh as he flew through the air toward his brother, a gleeful viciousness in his eyes. He burned golden in the sun, next to his brother's silver, and together they were almost painfully bright.

Still, something about the joy in Edward's face tugged at her memory. Something in the way that he was laughing and grinning. It was like the delight she often witnessed in her son's eyes when he played a game of tag with his friends.

* * *

><p>It was a few minutes before their plan was to take action, and the Elrics and Ada had gathered in her office to go over it a final time.<p>

"So we'll go to the restaurant and get a table outside. Al will face the window and keep an eye on it, since it's harder to see where he is looking. I will sit facing the other direction and find occasional excuses to look. Ada, you take a seat facing the window and keep an eye out, but don't look too often, or it'll be clear what we're doing. Hopefully he'll show up while we're there. We'll meet up when it's time to go in. Any questions?"

The plan was logical and Ada didn't have anything to add to it, so she shook her head, ignoring the niggling doubt that had been building throughout the day. He outranked her. He clearly knew what he was doing. She needed to stop worrying so much.

"Great. Al and I will go first. You follow in a few minutes." As he spoke, Edward shucked off the long red coat that had been wrapped around his shoulders all day, and in every picture Ada had ever seen. He looked smaller without it, like a watered-down version of himself.

"Brother, I thought you said that the good guys didn't need to dress inconspicuously."

"They do when they're trying to catch the bad guys." He folded the fabric and placed it on the chair he had seemingly claimed as his own. On his way towards the door, he cast one last mournful glance over his shoulder, just like Gil used to do when they were trying to teach him to sleep without a security blanket.

Everything Ada had tried to ignore throughout the day came pouring back, and the realization struck like a smack to the face.

He was just a kid. Shit, he was just a little kid, five years older than Gil. This was not a man and not the military genius that she had deluded herself into seeing. This was a teenage boy who liked to eat sugary foods, play games with his brother, and wear flashy clothing. He wasn't pompous or arrogant or anything else that she had thought throughout the day. He was _just a boy_. And it was too late for Ada to do something. She could only watch as the door to her office slammed shut. For a brief moment, she did not see Edward Elric raising his hand in a behind-the-shoulder wave, but Gil. Gil with his blue eyes sparkling and his cowlick sticking straight up in the air, walking off to set up an ambush in hopes of catching a convict.

_How could she have been so stupid?_

Ed probably didn't even notice anymore, that he was treated like an adult. The press had made him out to be this middle-aged man in a teenaged body, and the public had followed until Ed probably couldn't remember what it was like to be a kid.

But he was one. Shit, only five years older than Gil.

Ada barely made it to the restroom before the bile climbed up her throat.

* * *

><p>Ed an Al were talking and laughing while the eldest inhaled enough food for three people. From her assigned seat at the restaurant, Ada found herself spending more time watching them than the window. Of course he was eating so much. Fourteen was still growing, just entering the phase where he would become a vacuum for food. From where she was sitting, it looked like they were just two normal people (well, a normal person and a man in a suit of armor) having dinner.<p>

There was no time to stop what was going to happen. She had come to realize the immorality of this too late, and there was no way to signal to Ed that she didn't feel like following through. Not if it meant that a boy was going to have to do the kind of work grown men were afraid of. The potatoes she had ordered sat heavily in her roiling stomach, and she drummed her fingers against her thigh, praying, praying, praying that the man wouldn't come home.

Then Al tapped his fork against his plate and Ed stiffened in his chair. The lamplight eyes shifted in Ada's direction and he nodded to her. Without a word, Ada got up and went to pay her bill. She slipped out into the street and leaned against the wall, waiting for her partners to join her.

It didn't take long.

There were no steps, rushed and clumsy with the eagerness of youth, to announce Ed's arrival. He simply appeared beside her, seeming to melt out of the shadows in the dark clothing worn under his coat. One finger was pressed to his lips, and he began moving down the street toward the entrance to the apartment. What should have been an impressive display of stealth was reduced to a silly game of let's-play-spies by the boy's youth. Even so, he made it to the building, clapped his hands to remove the lock, and drifted up the stairs toward the room with the window.

He paused for a moment at the door, taking one deep breath, and then kicked it open and burst into the room. The wild motion revealed the flash of a knife in his right hand – Ada fought an overwhelming need to _snatch_ it away from him – as Ed let out a manic laugh and a smile full of boyish glee.

For a moment the man was shocked. He was sitting on a couch in house clothes, listening to the radio, but within seconds Ed was perched atop him, a lethal blade held to the man's neck. He had not, however, gotten the reputation he had for no reason. The convict grabbed Ed by the shoulder and flipped him onto the floor, landing over him while his hand scrabbled for a knife on the coffee table. Ada grabbed her gun, but the two figures were moving too much for a guaranteed shot. Before she had time to cry out and warn him, the convict slashed down at the wrist of Ed's knife hand, intent on drawing blood.

A horrible screeching sound wrenched through the air when the metal made contact, and the fabric of Ed's shirt sleeve tore away to leave glinting metal underneath. Taking advantage of his opponent's pause, Ed landed a firm kick to the convict's chest. While the man reeled for balance, the Fullmetal alchemist stripped off the now-restricting torn shirt, revealing an entire arm's worth of automail. Ada, too distracted by this development, missed the chance for a shot, and Ed threw himself back into the fray before she could recover.

He moved like mercury and grinned like it was all a joke. The man never really stood a chance.

Sure, he got in one lucky swipe, and scratched a scarlet line along the boy's jaw, but in the end there was an escaped convict dragged to his knees by transmuted flooring and kneeling in front of the alchemist victorious. Ed raised his metal arm for the final blow and

And Ada's world slowed down. Because she finally started to understand. Ed was an inferno of morality before her, glinting silver and gold, mature and childish, young and so, so old. She did not understand, but she accepted that she never would, and in a way that was the same thing.

The automail fell, and the convict fell to the ground, unconscious.

"I don't kill people." Ed replied to her questioning glance, and it was a man's declaration of a child's morals.

"No." She felt herself saying, quite outsider her own body. "I don't suppose that you would."

* * *

><p>Gil heard the door open that night and came running, his footsteps uneven and stumbling in his excitement and innocence.<p>

"Hey mom." He made to move out of the doorway, back into the house, but Ada knelt and reached out a shaking hand, puller him to her.

For a long, long moment, she held her young son to her chest, just a boy, and when she let go, she promised herself that her eyes would be dry.

"You said you were gonna work with Edward Elric today. Did you really get to?" He wiggled in her grasp and she released him.

"Yes, Gil. I really did." She would not cry.

"That's _so cool_. What was he like? Did you mistake his brother for him? Did you see him do alchemy? Did he…"

She would _not_.

**AN: So I hope you guys enjoyed this! I really had fun writing it. I'm sorry it took so long to update, but I've been really busy. Hopefully I'm back now, and you should get a new chapter about once a week. **

**I've been so overwhelmed with the positive response that this story has received. You guys are all the best, and I am super thankful that you've taken the time to read my stories.**

**Please let me know what you thought, and if you have any suggestions or ideas, just leave them in the comments!**

**Thanks!**

**Jakki**


	5. Protected

Protected - Darby Klein

Darby had been planning this for a while, she realized, as she crept past the main entrance to the military base. Maybe not consciously, but it normally took a whole lot more convincing than this to get her to do something so generally frowned upon. The only explanation, then, was that her subconscious had known that it would come to this, and had planned accordingly.

They had turned her away at the gate when she had tried to get in the legal way, even when she whipped out the big guns to explain to them that _one of their soldiers was in danger of serious, long-lasting trauma_.

They had actually laughed in her face.

So yeah, Darby had taken matters into her own hands, but wasn't it justified? There were times when necessity outweighed the law, and this was one example.

The People's Alchemist. It was enough to make her sick to her stomach. This boy, an _orphan_, if the papers were to be believed, should have been safely placed with a family and people to look after his emotional development. A boy needed a system of support and communication. Instead, he was being paraded around the country in a circus act that was clearly the ploy of a government trying to regain the backing of its country. Sickening how it was working. Sickening how Darby seemed to be the only one willing to step up and put a stop to it.

But she _would_ stop it. She would blow the lid on this whole story and make sure that the government would not be able to repeat this process with anyone else. She could still remember the moment she found out what was happening. The morning paper along with a warm cup of coffee to start her day. The words arching across the cover of the page _THE PEOPLE'S ALCHEMIST RETURNS MINE TO TOWN_. And a grainy, black-and-white image of a boy, half-snarling at the camera.

The picture was the only hint she had needed as to his current state of emotional need, but she read the article anyway, and realized the extent of the problem with growing nausea. A pawn in the political games of this country. This boy needed the support of at least one strong adult figure, and a commanding officer was no replacement for a parent.

As a social worker, it was Darby's duty to correct this situation, permission or not.

She had tried conventional methods at first, writing the military headquarters to request that Edward Elric be released into state custody, but there had been a return letter from _the fuhrer himself_ telling her, in the most bureaucratic of terms, exactly where she could shove her suggestion. Of course, that could only be because the fuhrer wasn't fully aware of what was going on. Surely, if she could present strong evidence for the need of Edward's removal from this environment, everything would straighten itself out.

So here she was, a branch caught in her hair, a leaf or two down her shirt, and a smattering of ant bites on her left ankle, but through the fence. Which meant the hard part was mostly over. As long as she walked with purpose, there would be very few security checks unless she tried to visit one of the higher-ups. Of course, this was only if she could get the branch out of her hair, as it was currently a very obvious marker of her not belonging.

Ten minutes later, Darby slipped into the building, hair frizzed up on one side, but otherwise unremarkable, in a way that she had dressed to be. It just took a few stops in the hallway, asking some lower-ranking soldiers if they could point her in the direction of Colonel Mustang's office, and she was well on her way. Sure, she had known it was going to be easy, but this was bordering on the ridiculous. While trained military men might know how to deal with her if she had been some sort of terrorist, this was clearly no place where a child could logically feel safe.

The door was wide open, and from the prepubescent voice drifting out in the hallway, it was clear that the 'Fullmetal Alchemist' was within. Another mark against the government. Didn't they know that by making this boy such a big deal, they would be putting him in danger of attempts on his life? Darby started a list in her head to give to her superior. This was worse than anything she had expected. With evidence like this, it wouldn't take much effort to pull the boy out of the military and into foster care.

Upon actually entering the doorway, Darby had to take a moment to readjust her point of view. She had been expecting a quiet, diligent workspace with a boy sitting somewhere in the background, keeping mostly quiet. Instead, there was a general hubbub of activity in the center of the room. From what she could see, there was a tall blond man hunched over a boy made all of gold, holding him in a headlock while he ruffled the stands of hair pinned back in a braid. The boy was snarling and lashing out with his elbow in an attempt to get free. A huge suit of armor stood behind the activity, shuffling from foot to foot and communicating without expression his discomfort with the situation.

Before they could notice her, a clearing of a throat came from the doorway further in. There was the Flame Alchemist, easily identifiable after Ishval. He should have been disapproving of such activity under his watch, but there was a smug twist to his lips that let Darby know that he was in no mood to stop this behavior, and that this was more of a regular occurrence.

"Having trouble, Fullmetal?" He was mocking the boy. Another demerit.

The boy writhed in his trap and snapped his teeth like a rabid wolf. "Go screw yourself, Colonel Bastard." The foul mouth of a boy feeling inferior and needing to assert his dominance over the situation. Why was no one acting to stop this? In fact, a glance around the room showed that everyone was in a various state of amusement at the scene playing out before them. This was emotional abuse!

"Hmm. Not on government time, I'm afraid." There was a full blown smirk on the man's face, and the blond restraining the boy let a chuckle slip. A diligent woman previously unnoticed let a sigh be heard from her place at her desk.

Fullmetal stopped struggling and kicked at table leg near him, leaving a small divot. "Damn pervert. Don't you have papers to be signing?"

"Perhaps I finished early."

"Don't pull that. I'll be your age by the time you finish _today's_ paperwork." Which a vengeful grin, Edward grabbed at the arm that had slackened in distraction, and flipped the blond man over his shoulder. In a split second, the tables had turned, so that now the man was on the ground, with one heavy black boot resting on his chest. So the boy felt the need to learn how to defend himself when he should be in a situation of security.

"Mess my hair up again, Havoc, and you'll wake up without any. I know where you sleep." And the boot was lifted with a demure smile. The blond man, Havoc apparently, rolled to his feet and flashed a grin at the boy.

"No promises."

Was Edward Elric constantly in such a state of attack? He felt the need to make threats to ensure his safety, only have the warnings thrown back in his face?

"I think I've seen quite enough." Darby could not maintain her silence, and the words burst from her mouth to shatter the easygoing atmosphere of the room. There was a flurry of movement as everyone in the office adjusted to the newest presence.

"Can we help you?" The Flame Alchemist, whose face had been open and laughing a moment ago, was now all business.

"Darby. Darby Klein. I work for the Child Protection Department, and I was simply here to observe the Fullmetal Alchemist."

"And what," the voice was a barren artic plane, "did you find?"

"This situation is entirely unsuitable for a child. Clearly our department will have to take immediate action to see if a better set-up can be found for-."

"Wait. Child Protection Department? Like a social worker?" The child in question spoke up now, and in the quiet that had befallen the room, his voice rang out.

"That is the general idea, yes."

"Like the kind of person who would try to separate my brother and me?" There was something feral awakening in the boy's eyes, and as he took a step forward Darby had to prevent herself from automatically stepping back. She was a seasoned professional. This was hardly the worst reaction she had encountered…

"Though that is not our intention, there is a distinct possibility, and that is something that you must be prepared to…deal…"

There was a fire in Edward's eyes as he took another step forward. The anger Darby saw in his gaze was not that of a boy, but a seasoned old man, who had seen the worst of the world and had a right to pass judgment on what was right and wrong. Nothing like what she had seen a minute before and had mistaken for the extent of a child's rage. In a moment, the social worker considered the fact that she may have not gone about this in the most reasonable way.

"Fullmetal." The quiet word fell into the room like a flat stone, ringing in an unnatural and commanding way. The boy jerked to a stop as his commanding officer stepped past him, regaining ground that had been recently traveled, and gazed at Darby with a thinly-veiled glare.

"I expect you will find that it will be a bit harder to remove these boys from their situation than you think. The fuhrer himself has appointed this boy to the level of state alchemist, and would not have done so if he did not think that the military would be able to provide a satisfactory living situation. Now, if you have seen enough, as you said earlier, then I suppose there is no more reason for you to be here. You will find the door to be directly behind you."

Darby moved like a puppet on strings as she took another step back and felt the door, warm and solid, behind her. The command had turned her body off-kilter, and in the unfettered shock, her brain reevaluated the room, and the positions that the military men had assumed when confronted with an unexpected presence.

Edward Elric had shoved the suit of armor into a corner, so that there were no windows, doors, or open spaces behind him, and was now standing directly between the armor and the social worker he viewed as a threat. The men under Colonel Mustang had all shifted to cover their commanding officer in some way, and were now watching Darby with bright eyes that tracked her every movement. The sighing woman from earlier had her hand resting at the top of a holster on her hip.

Edward Elric was protecting the armor. The soldiers were protecting the colonel. And Roy Mustang was standing just ahead of the Fullmetal Alchemist, shifted slightly so that he could grab the boy in a second, or stop something that was coming toward him.

All this was noted in less than a second as Darby whirled around and slammed the door to the office, intent on getting as far away as possible.

It wasn't until later that night, as Darby sat before the fire and started to compose a list of reasons to remove Edward Elric from the military, that she saw the situation for what it had been. The Flame Alchemist had been fully intent on protecting his underling, even when it should have been the other way around, and his men were perfectly content to do what needed to be done, so that their colonel could behave in such a way.

No, a commanding officer was no replacement for a parent, but the relationship between Edward Elric and Colonel Mustang was hardly that of a commanding officer and his subordinate.

Perhaps there was no need for the list after all. Before she could overthink it, Darby tossed the neat stack of paper into the fire, and watched as the flames burned away her reasons that Edward was not safe.

It seemed oddly fitting.

**AN: Sorry. I know I've been gone for a while now. Classes have been super hectic recently. Lucky for you all, however, I have recently discovered the wonders of Pacemaker and will hopefully be updating somewhat regularly over the holiday break.**

**I have also recently realized just how many oneshots are in 50. Goodness sake. If anyone has any prompt or trait that they want me to write, just let me know! I have no problem writing from the point of view of canon characters as well (they should be putting in more appearances as we go along).**

**Let me know what you thought! Your reviews make my day!**

**-Jakki**


	6. Childish

Childish - Vato Falman

Falman leaned against his desk, shoved off in the corner though it was, and slowly nursed his third drink of the night. Just enough to get him to fully relax, but not enough that he would have much to worry about in the morning. The cheery music in the air was infectious, and had caused a rare grin to stretch across his face. He wasn't drunk enough to actually join in on the partying yet, but he was happy to sit and watch as everyone else let go of their inhibitions for a few hours.

Some of his coworkers had shown a little less restraint when it came to their alcohol intake. Mustang was currently standing in the middle of the room, regaling a rapt Havoc with tales of everything that would change once he became fuhrer. Hawkeye was watching with a smile of disapproval and exasperated fondness. She was clearly not drunk, but her normally pinned-back hair was hanging loose and long, which for her was almost the equivalent. Breda and Fuery were chatting casually while Breda slowly coerced the slightly-inebriated shorter man into a game of poker.

The décor of the room was actually rather dreary. Someone, probably Hughes (before he had left to be home with his wife and daughter), had strung up red and green tinsel along with a sign that said _Merry Christmas_ across the front. By now, one of the nails holding the sign up had relinquished its grip, and half the words lay tattered on the ground, stained with mud from uncaring boots. There was a bowl of punch (which was, by this point, more than half vodka) sitting on what was normally Havoc's desk.

Somehow, it was the happiness of the people within the room that kept the party from falling apart. An hour in, Havoc and the Colonel had both donned fake reindeer antlers, determined to 'do this properly'. No one had been surprised. By this point, it was well-known just how much their commanding officer enjoyed the holiday. Falman suspected it had something to do with the lack of paperwork. Aside from that, it was just nice to have a time where the officers could stop acting like soldiers and actually enjoy each other's company. There was a simple joy in the feeling of staying after-hours in a place of work and pretending it was meant for some other purpose.

The door to the office slammed open, kicked in by a black-booted foot, but the sound was completely covered by the music and volume of the Colonel's rants. The world's youngest state alchemist stood in the frame, struck silent for a moment as he tried to make sense of the sight before him. The large suit of armor that was his younger brother shifted from foot to foot just behind him.

Looking for all the world as if he were preparing for an ambush, Major Elric began to shuffle into the room, latching his eyes on the figure of Mustang, slouched on the floor in the center of the room. The man looked up as his subordinate approached him, and the boy raised his metal hand, clenched around a stack of papers. Falman noted that the left hand was tied in a sling around the boy's neck.

"I'm here to turn in my report…" His voice, normally sure and strong with the brashness of youth, was now a bit unsure. "We just got back in a half hour ago."

Of course, Falman reasoned, it must be fairly odd to see the Colonel as he was now, spots of color high on his cheeks, jacket loose and unbuttoned, reindeer horns sticking straight up. Everyone else at the party had seen the gradual descent to this state, but the boy was getting the full effect.

"Fullmetal!" Oh yeah, and Mustang was known to completely lose control of his volume when drunk. "Why not join us? Get a drink." He gave a vague wave in the direction of Havoc's desk.

"What the hell? I'm underage, Bastard." The Colonel's comment had probably been meant to set the boy at ease, but it seemed to have done the opposite. "What the hell is going on right now anyway? Aren't you all supposed to be at home?"

Just then, his brother nudged him with a metal elbow. "Brother, I think today's Christmas."

For a moment, it looked like Ed didn't understand what had just been said, but his eyes looked where the suit of armor was pointing, to see the dilapidated sign on the floor.

"Huh. Would you look at that." And confident Ed was back, the tension washed away by comprehension. "Well, that explains why you look even more like an idiot than normal. Why are you having a party _here_?"

Mustang began to pompously declare that they had been planning on going to a bar, but it would be expensive to rent out when they had free space, and someone needed to be around to collect the Fullmetal Alchemist's report when he returned. There hadn't been much deliberation. The office could be fun enough, when enough alcohol was made available.

Falman, however, was less focused on the conversation and more on the young twelve year old soldier standing in the middle of an adults' Christmas party. The cheery coating on the night slipped for a second, and the grey-haired man saw the room for was it truly was: a sad spectacle. No one here had anywhere else to be or anyone else to be with. This office was their life. No wonder they had all been happy to stay in.

But at least for adults, this was something acceptable.

It was the boy who was causing the true sympathy to well up in Falman. At twelve, he should still be caught up in the magic of the holiday, spending the morning unwrapping gifts and the night with a loving family, basking in the glow of companionship. Instead, the kid was out running errands for the military all day, distracted to the point that he hadn't even noticed the date. Nor did it seem like he was about to ask for some holiday time off. In fact, if Falman could hear correctly, it sounded like Ed was trying to get the Colonel to focus long enough to give him another assignment. Sure, everyone knew that the kid had motivation like no one else, but this had to be a bit extreme?

Apparently, the Colonel was not cooperating with the boy, and a few minutes passed as Edward cursed at the man until he was blue in the face, and the recipient of said curses tried to get the Fullmetal Alchemist drunk, until the boy seemed to decide that it was not worth the effort.

"Fine, Colonel Bastard. I'm going. But I'll see you tomorrow for an assignment, bright and early, and you better believe that I will bring some nice, loud pots and pans with me." The kid stalked out of the room, slamming the door behind him and leaving a moment of silence in his wake.

"The miniskirts will, of course, have to hit at least mid-thigh…" Mustang resumed his pontificating, drawing Havoc back in and returning the room to the state it had been in before. Falman, however, felt the lingering sadness that had come from his earlier observation and, on a split-second decision, found himself slipping out the door after Ed. His loud voice made him an easy target to follow, and Falman stayed a few turns behind him as they made their way toward the front door.

"I should have gotten you a present or something. What kinda shit big brother doesn't get their little brother a present for Christmas?" The words not meant to be overheard carried back down the hallway, and Falman couldn't keep his trained ears from listening in.

"It's okay, Brother. I didn't get you anything either."

"Yeah, but I bet you were _going _to. I bet you just didn't do it because you knew that I would forget and you didn't want to make me feel bad."

"That's not true!"

They were nearing the door now. "Yeah it is. Here. I know what I'll do." There was the quiet sound of a clap, and then the unmistakable flash of light that always accompanied a transmutation. Apparently, the boy was using his gifts for more than the military's dirty work.

"Thank you, Brother!" Whatever had been done seemed to make Al very happy, and there was a content silence that followed the boys out the door and into the main courtyard. Falman increased his pace so that he could see which way they went once outside, but stopped as soon as he opened the outer doors.

Somehow, the boys had gotten the central water pump, which had been frozen solid for the past few weeks, to start working again and were now using it to flood water over the whole surface of the courtyard. When they had successfully gotten it everywhere, Edward went to stand in the middle of it all and clapped his hands together. When he slammed them to the ground, the blue light showed the emergence of a lovely winterscape, as the water froze into mounds of snow.

"Come on, Brother!" Al had already climbed to the top of one of the mounds, and Ed let out as whoop as he ran to meet him. Once there, the boy leapt onto the back of his younger brother, and used the suit of armor like a sled. They tumbled apart at the bottom of the hill and rolled to independent stops, the older boy gasping for breath and laughing past cheeks pinked with cold. Already, the snow was caking into his hair.

A snowball flew out of nowhere and the Fullmetal Alchemist in the chest, calling on his pride to retaliate. The boy responded with great enthusiasm, and soon the courtyard was filled with boyish laughter as a suit of armor and his older brother pelted each other tirelessly with frozen projectiles and occasionally descended into short sparring matches. The light from the nearby streetlamp caught on an uneven spot of Al's armor, and as Falman looked closer, he saw that there was now a small kitten etched into the rerebrace. One that hadn't been there when the boys had stopped in to return the report.

And Falman felt the sadness that had built up in his chest begin to ease a little.

When the boys had been going at it for fifteen minutes, showing no signs of slowing down, the grey-haired interloper excused himself and slipped back inside. He made his quiet way down the hall and returned to the party with almost no one the wiser. Mustang and Havoc had started to work together on brainstorming new ideas, and Breda had managed to convince Fuery to play poker with him (he appeared to be winning handily).

Hawkeye was standing over near the window and caught Falman's glance from across the room, motioning him over with a jerk of her head. When he reached her side, no words were exchanged, just a soft smile to show that she had seen what he had done. Falman returned it and stayed next to her, as he didn't yet feel like returning to his desk. As he glanced around the room and out the window, he saw that the view looked down onto the courtyard. It looked like the snowball fight had ended, and Al had convinced his brother to make snow angels with him.

In that moment, surrounded by his friends and the cheery golden glow that they cast, looking down on the last innocence of a boy who was twelve-going-on-fifty, Falman realized that he was perfectly content.

**AN: Hey guys! So this is my little Christmas special. I was trying to post it before the end of Christmas day, so let's all just agree to pretend that I live somewhere like Hawaii, where it technically still is. :)**

**Thank you all so much for all the feedback that I got on the last chapter! I have so many suggestions and ideas (though I could always use more). I want to apologize if I don't write a oneshot for every prompt. My inspiration is a fickle thing, and it won't always work with me.**

**There should be another chapter fairly soon. I've been working on one for a while, but I set it aside to write this. The writer's block is hitting hard, but I can hit back!**

**I'd like to thank BuggyNess for her constant encouraging reviews and for the prompt that created this!**

**Merry Christmas everyone!  
>-Jakki<strong>


	7. Oblivious

Oblivious - June

There was no way he was a student here.

He couldn't be a student because June would have _remembered_ a face like that. Hell, it should not have been so attractive for a guy to sit in the light of a window and read a book while surrounded by the dusky glow of a library, but this was no ordinary guy. The sunlight did more than crown him; it claimed him. The light toyed with his hair and skin and the line of his jaw in a way that suggested that he and the sun were rather well-acquainted. The sun announced that this was its child.

Though, looking closely at him, June could guess that this would have been obvious even if they had met by the darkness of the new moon.

It made him untouchable, this declaration from the stars. In any other situation, June would have already been across the room and working her way to a situation where they could comfortably move to a place where _noise_ was more acceptable. As it was, she found herself hesitating, though checking her surroundings. Just because she hadn't pounced yet didn't mean that anyone else could just come along and take what she had clearly laid claim to.

What was she so afraid of? This was something she had pulled off time and time again. It was easy when dealing with boys her age, the raging ball of hormones that they happened to be. A properly shaped shirt here and a carefully calculated movement there and she could have been reciting nursery rhymes for all they were listening to her words. This one would be no different. Besides, the paper on chemical formulas before her was practically _begging_ for procrastination.

She could do this.

Making sure none of the hesitance leaked onto her face, June set her hips to swinging and began to sashay her way over to the window where the sun-child was sitting. He had a book precariously balanced on the edge of the table in front of him, and June set it as her target. As she walked past, her hip bumped the edge of the cover and caused the book to clatter noisily to the floor.

"Oh! I'm so sorry!" Glance at the boy for the first time since she had officially made him her prey.

He was reading.

He was not reading with the half-interested boredom that dominated the faces throughout the building, but with tongue-between-the-teeth, crinkled nose investment. Apparently, too invested to notice what could have been a wonderful meeting for him. He was lucky that his attraction was even stronger up close, because June decided to give him another chance to get this right.

"I'll just pick it back up and be on my way." So perhaps her voice was a little bit louder than was strictly necessary, but there were no librarians in the near vicinity, and so far the plot to catch Sunshine's attention wasn't working. Even so, June took the time to bend sharply at the waist – pausing a moment to allow notice of all the benefits her short skirt and low-cut shirt were currently providing – before straightening up with the book in hand.

He was still reading.

Fine. No more time for playing coy. One color-tipped fingernail tapping the top line of the book. A crease of irritation started to form between two golden eyebrows, and that was the biggest response she had gotten so far, so June allowed her hand to drift further, until the finger was tapping out an uneven beat on the center of the page.

Slowly, awareness seemed to seep into the set of Sunshine's shoulders. Eventually, he glanced at the page number and closed the book with a sharp _thunk_ that could have caught June's finger if she hadn't pulled it back in time.

"What." The question was flat, and angry eyes were turned in June's direction.

Oh _hell_.

She was ruined. This was it. There would never be another man that June would love as much as this one currently seated before her. She had never been an artist, but June suddenly came to understand what an artist meant when they said that they found their muse. Her hands twitched in her pockets, aching to sculpt a rendition of this body and preserve everything about it to live on as a reminder, thousands of years from now, that someone like this had graced the face of the earth with his otherworldly presence.

The lamplight eyes lingered for maybe a moment, before any interest in them faded out into a dull glaze that suggested the owner would be allowing the next words out of June's mouth to slip right in one ear and out the other.

"I've never seen you around here before. Surely I would have noticed if you came here often?" She folded her arms across her chest to allow for full display of her assets, but Sunshine merely gave an indignant snort and went to open his book back up.

"I'm doing research on an assignment. I'll be gone in a few days." At least it was an intelligent response. At the moment, June was taking everything that she could get.

"So you're here on a job? Or are you more of a drifter? If you need a place to stay, I have a –"

"I've already got a place." He cut her off without glancing up from the reopened book.

"Oh." Why was this _so hard_? She was never this bad at flirting. Of course, sun-child was turning out to exceptionally dense. It was time to step it up. "Well. If you ever need a place to rest or, _anything_ else, you can give me a call. I'll give you my number."

There was a small pad of paper that she kept in her back pocket for just this sort of occasion, and she whipped it out now, scrawling her name and phone number across the page in easy-to-read script. Her colored nails pressed small crescents into the pulp as she slid the thing across the table. The second her hand was removed, however, it can sliding back, topped by a white-gloved hand.

"I've got everything I need."

An exasperated sigh slipped out June's lips before she could stop it, and Sunshine looked back up from his book to shoot her a questioning glance.

"Um, thank you? For the offer?" It looked like he was grasping at straws now, trying to figure out just what he had said to offend her, and this was too much. All she wanted was a quick roll in the hay with a boy made of sunlight, and this was what she got instead: one of the most awkward and stilted conversations she had ever participated in.

To hell with subtlety. "Look, I'm trying to ask you if you would like to spend the night with me. And sleep together." The lamplight eyes widened to almost comical proportions. "You have my number. Call me if that sounds like something you would like to do."

He looked for all the world like someone had just popped his life raft, floundering and gaping at her. "But, I have research to do."

Unbelievable.

"You know what? Screw it. Enjoy your damn books." She knew it was childish, but June could already feel her cheeks beginning to burn. She whirled on her heel and marched back over to her table, hitting one of his books to the floor as she went. The paper on chemical formulas was waiting, and she took her anger out on it in a furious storm of writing.

"Slow down there, hon, or you'll burn a hole in the paper." Jill, who had probably already written the damn thing, flounced into the chair next to her, but June continued on as if she hadn't noticed. "No, seriously, what's up?" June ignored her until the pencil was tugged from her grip, and only then did she realize that she was mirroring the experience she had just gone through with Sunshine. With a snarl, she folded her arms on the table and shoved her head onto them like a pillow.

There was silence for a moment, and then "Whoa. Drop dead gorgeous at four o'clock. Hot damn, but I wouldn't mind some of that." There was a clench of dread in June's stomach, but she looked anyway. Sure enough, there was Sunshine.

"Don't _bother_," she snarled.

**AN: Okay, so brief headcannon time. I don't think that Ed is asexual, so much as I think he is just extremely single-minded. I think that when he was trying to get their bodies back, that was literally all that he thought about. So the idea that someone could expect him to desire something else, even momentarily, would be baffling. That's at least how I tried to write it this time.**

**That being said, this chapter took for-freaking-ever. I wrote the Christmas one while I was halfway through this one. Still, I finally finished, and so you all get a fairly prompt update. Considering there's still a week left of break, you'll probably get another soon!**

**Hope you all enjoyed! Leave a review if you did!**

**-Jakki**


	8. Pragmatic

Pragmatic - Heinkel

It was, Heinkel decided, not quite the way he would have chosen to die. To be honest, he would have preferred to be out in the snow, crunching through the icy static of the air. As it was, he was currently trapped under the weight of half a building, with the smell of ammonia still burning in his nose, and a small ember of rage burning under his left collarbone. Homicidal urges had never been a problem until he had found himself combined with the mind of a lion, but now they were ruling his mind, sharpening it to a razor-tip clarity he was using to plan his revenge. Months. He had dedicated months to furthering the agenda of that maniac and this was all that came out of it?

A gasp sounded around the room. Heinkel's ears, designed to pick up the slightest whisper, perked up. His body was trapped in its current position, and he couldn't see anything aside from the pile of rubble in front of him, but it sounded like that brat was somehow still alive, and fully capable of muttering to himself. Well, if nothing else the kid was proving himself to be rather resilient. Some of the warnings that they had received were beginning to make sense. Maybe the Fullmetal Alchemist wasn't much of a physical threat, but he had proven himself to be smart, and was now turning out to be on-par with a cockroach when it came to survival.

There was a flash of blue light against the stones in front of him, and the clatter of metal striking the ground. Had Elric made the noise? Or was it just another piece of rubble falling from the ceiling?

Another gasp. A dull clap. The flash of blue light was much closer now. For a moment, white fireworks lit the back of the lion chimera's eyes as the pressure on his body was suddenly released. He craned his neck around to stare in awe as his vision cleared to reveal the floor flowing up into giant stone hands that held off the rubble.

Thankfully, nothing seemed to be broken, and Heinkel was able to shove onto his knees and glance around at his surroundings. For a moment, it looked like the boy was dead. He was flat out on the ground in a puddle of blood. But his arm was outstretched, topped by a pristine white glove that had meant the difference between life and death, and two golden eyes glared up from the floor, as if defying anyone who questioned the survival of the Fullmetal Alchemist for even a second.

"Damn that Kimblee." Heinkel muttered the words to himself as he rubbed some dust out of his eyes, because the man had certainly gotten away and there was no way to catch him, but the ember was still burning away and he needed to do _something_ about it.

When he looked again, the kid's eyes had closed, and he shared a questioning glance with Darius. This was gonna screw with his conscious if the last thing the kid had done was save his life. As he started walking toward the curled up body, he heard Darius asking the questions they were both wondering. Most importantly, if the body was even alive, and, if so, why it had saved them when it was already on the point of collapse

He was breathing. And one eye was cracked open still, which Heinkel could see now that he was drawing closer. Well, that answered one question. As for the other…

"Don't get me wrong…" They were close enough to kneel down next to him now and oh hell, it looked a whole lot worse at this distance. There was a huge green pole that looked like it went all the way through the kid's side, piercing the bright red coat and hanging garishly out the other end. The end that would have been nearest to the floor, the end that must have pushed _through _the kid's side, was ragged and crimped. This was not going to be a clean hole. This must have made a _mess _that would hurt like hell. "I need someone… to pull this thing stuck in my side…out of me…or I've had it."

What.

Distantly, Heinkel could hear Darius quizzing Elric on why he was trusting them, but right now he couldn't care less. He was just remembering back to the boy who had spent the past few days walking behind them, bickering with his younger brother and stumbling through the tall drifts of snow. He had fought them off by dodging their strikes, and then later by damaging their sense of smell. And all the time Heinkel had been laughing to himself, thinking that _this_ was why you weren't supposed to let kids into the army. Wondering how his commanding officer couldn't see that this boy was just too soft to be able to do what needed to be done. Sure, he could endure harsh temperature and the company of adults, but in the end he was just a kid.

And he remembered what Kimblee had kept saying. _Don't overlook him. He's naive and childish, but he can pack a punch_.

He tuned back in when the kid said 'please', because that word should never be used in this context. This boy was strapped to a chair, looking down at the tool used to tug off the fingernails, and telling the torturer to _hurry up, he didn't have all day_. One glance at Darius showed that they were thinking along the same lines, and then the gorilla chimera was convincing himself that this was something they were allowed to do. Then he, the bastard, scooted around behind the kid and lifted him up by his armpits. He was doing it deliberately; taking the job that was easier. Sure, he could offer up their services, but apparently Heinkel would be doing all the hard work.

"But as soon as I pull that out, you're gonna lose a lot of blood, and then it's lights out." _Please figure something else out. Please don't make me pull this thing out._ The lion side of him had taken away any squeamishness around blood, but that didn't mean that he was looking forward to causing intentional pain to a kid. Especially not to a kid who had just saved his life.

Said kid simply twisted up his battered face and scoffed at him. As if to question why he always had to be the one to get stuff done. The expression felt so out-of-place here. "The moment you pull it out…I'll close it up with alchemy…before I lose too much blood…"

"What?" Because this _was not the appropriate response to this situation_ and Heinkel would have tried to shake some sense into the kid if it wouldn't have made everything so much worse. At least, "Do you have any experience in performing medical alchemy?" Because this was important. Because if not, he was just going to kill this kid, in cold-blooded murder.

"Long ago…when I tried to perform human transmutation…I researched it briefly…"

And that was not enough, not enough, not enough, because Heinkel had always been proud of the fact that while he was a killer, he was not a murderer, and that was about to change. But there was no way out, because if he did something the kid would die, and if he didn't the kid would die, and here his savior was: sitting on the floor, held up by his armpits, and glaring at the world, as if challenging its right to deal him this hand.

Darius was once again thinking along the same lines, and was protesting loudly, but Elric just stared up through his hair gone lank with sweat and glared at Heinkel, as if he was fed up with waiting. For a moment the lion chimera remembered that the only reason he was currently up and alive was because this boy had realized that he wasn't able to pull the pole out on his own.

"I'll use my own life…in place of a Philosopher's Stone…" He was panting between words and that was probably a punctured lung that was causing it. Heinkel tried to focus on a diagnosis. Anything to distract from what was actually being said, because Heinkel had spent enough time around Kimblee to understand how this would work. "It may shorten my life a little bit, though."

So careless with his life. No, not careless, just pragmatic. More pragmatic than his innate nature should have allowed him to be.

"Are you sure about this?" Because he needed to know. That if nothing else this was assisted suicide rather than murder.

"This is no time for _debate_." He spat the last word, probably in a combination of exasperation and pain. "If this is the outcome of my sense of mercy, then I've got to wipe my own ass."

Darius was in danger of having his eyes fall out of his head, and Heinkel tried to recall when he had ever thought this boy too soft to be in the military. He saw now what his commanding officer must have been thinking when he allowed Elric to enlist. Now he was just wondering if said CO ever actually managed to control the kid's actions. With drive like this, it seemed highly unlikely.

Still, the comment about mercy didn't make any sense. This request was anything but merciful.

A sigh of resignation. "I'm not sure how you mean, but this _is_ no time for debate." The boy had stopped gasping between his words and considering how extensive the injuries _had _to be, that was probably not a good sign. "I'll pull it out."

The brat _smiled_. And gave a nod as if to say _well get on with it_.

Then closed his eyes. One inhale. One exhale.

"Okay, pull it." And for one second, Heinkel looked into his eyes and believed that he could actually do it, because there was a Philosopher's Stone inside the soul that was burning its way out of this kids body. Something pure and merciful and cruel and immutable. Something _gold_.

Then he pulled, and the screaming began, and it was all he could do to hold onto that one last spark of hope. Elric's eyes were blown wide toward the ceiling as he gasped out soul-wrenching screams. This was not help. This was murder, _murder, murder_ because there was a kid in front of him, just a kid in way over her head who was screaming at the ceiling as a garish green pole was torn from his side, the red and green a mockery of a child's holiday and shit shit shit shitshit_shitshitshitshit _he was gonna wake up from nightmares of doing this for years. This would keep his subconscious locked and loaded with all the ammunition it could ever need to tear him apart because he was _murdering a kid_.

He felt the moment his lion's nature took over, because suddenly he wasn't worried anymore. Suddenly he was just wishing that the body would stop _squirming_ because it was making it difficult to remove the pole (_in the back of his mind something was cringing and screaming too but that had to be filed away for the moment_).

Then the pole was free with a sucking _tug_ and Elric was making this wet gasping sound, pulling in air to fill lungs that probably weren't even working. A clap and then blue light was pouring from the hole. Not a flash because this would take _way_ more than that. Then that too faded.

There was a second of silence where Heinkel stumbled back to himself and the only sound was the ringing left in his ears and the slow trickle of rubble from above. He heard Darius ask if the kid was dead but there was no way he could look. Because there was no way the kid was going to bounce back from that. No way.

"Don't go writing me off." A ghost. The ghost of the kid come to haunt him for the rest of his life. The only explanation for the voice he was currently hearing. Though, from Darius's reaction it seemed like he could hear it too.

"I'm not completely healed…but I spliced together a working system…and for now…this jury-rigging has at least stopped the bleeding." The first thing that Heinkel noticed was that Elric was back to gasping for breath between his words, whatever that meant.

He was woefully aware of his own lack of experience with this sort of thing. "Then, you need to have a doctor look at you."

"No…there's no time for that…" Heinkel wished he would stop _saying _that, but his shock held him in place as the boy started to stagger to his feet.

"H-Hey"

"I have to go after Kimblee…or the others will be at risk…" And the kid apparently never quit because he was already walking off toward the exit.

Two steps. He made it two steps before he collapsed back onto the ground. Next to him, Darius stood, and the two chimeras started to make their way after the child who had just saved both of their lives, and then his own.

"Fool, there's no way you can fight and win in your shape." Heinkel wondered absently if there was going to come a time when he and Darius weren't thinking the exact same thing.

A flash of red. A flash which, upon closer inspection, seemed to be a small stone.

"A Philosopher's Stone, huh? That's the one Mr. Kimblee had."

And for a second that ember beneath his collarbone flared up brighter than ever. "We don't need to call that freak 'Mister' anything! Not after he got us tangled up in this, too." Not after he dropped a building on a boy that he knew would never try to kill him.

"You're right," Darius muttered. "What do you say we bid that bastard farewell now?"

"Yeah." For a moment, the lion's need for revenge battled with the man's need to survive. In the end, practicality won out. "We'll let him think we died here, and become free men."

"So, what do we do about him?" And there was no escaping it for long. The fact that they were standing over the crumpled body of a boy who had saved them both. A boy who could have been part cockroach for the amount of times, tonight alone, that he had beaten insane odds against his survival.

"We can't just let him die, right? We owe him our lives, after all." And there was no way to argue that the debt had already been repaid, because they had only made everything worse with their presence. Without waiting for a response, Heinkel swung the kid only his back (he was so light and small, it made something in his stomach twist), and started making his way out of the rubble.

"Yeah." Well, at least Darius would be on-board too.

"Once we get outside, we'll have to find him a doctor, right away." Because somehow Elric wasn't dead, and Heinkel had no intention of simply standing around, waiting to become a murderer.

"Yearh." Hmm. Looked like Darius agreed.

**AN: Hey guys! Looks like you all get one more update before I head back to school. Huzzah! I have always been tempted to write a fic about this scene, and so when Gamma Cavy requested something from Heinkel or Darius, I just couldn't help myself.**

**Here's to hoping that you all enjoyed! I hope you all had a lovely New Year! Please let me know what you thought of my story by leaving a review! Reviews are love!**

**-Jakki**


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